Panel: Closing any CPS high schools would pose gang danger to students

January 10, 2013|By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Chicago Tribune reporter

A CPS commission on school closings has recommended that no Chicago high schools be shuttered. (Abel Uribe)

The commission studying school closings in Chicago is recommending that no high schools be shut down because doing so would endanger students by forcing them to cross gang boundaries or move to schools where rival gangs hold sway.

"With gang boundaries sometimes shifting on an almost weekly basis, and barring extreme circumstances, it is simply too risky to ask high-school-age kids to cross gang lines just to travel to and from schools," the Commission on School Utilization wrote in a preliminary report issued Thursday.

The commission, appointed by Chicago Public Schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett to engage the community on the thorny issue of closing schools, won't issue its final report until early March.

The district said it needs to close schools that are underenrolled to deal with a looming $1 billion deficit. CPS won't unveil its list of schools to be closed until the end of March, creating fear and confusion among many parents in South and West Side communities that figure to be hit hardest.

The commission's preliminary report could help frame the issue for those communities. In addition to recommending that high schools be left alone, the commission recommends that schools with more than 600 students be kept open, as well as underused schools that are in the process of adding grades.

The highest-performing "Level 1" schools would also be spared, as would Level 2 schools that are showing improvement, under the commission's recommendations.

If the report holds weight at decision time, more than 30 high schools that operate at less than 60 percent capacity would remain open. The district argues that keeping underenrolled schools open costs millions of dollars, but Commission Chairman Frank Clark said Thursday that shuttering high schools would simply be too dangerous.

"High schools should be taken off the table because the impact, particularly the safety issue around gang boundaries, it's an issue that goes across the school system and is particularly burdensome and problematic for the older kids," Clark said. "We just couldn't figure out a way to adequately deal with that and thought at this time that simply should be something we table."

What will be in the commission's final report remains unclear. CPS has said the group will issue a list of schools to target for closing. Clark has said the commission will not produce such a list.

Byrd-Bennett has also said the district is not bound to follow the commission's suggestions and on Thursday issued a statement saying, "I look forward to giving the report a thoughtful review over the next few days to consider their recommendation."

CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll said Byrd-Bennett will take a few days to review the report before offering a formal response.

"She could accept all their recommendations or tweak some of them," Carroll said.

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis has been critical of the commission but on Thursday said she agreed that high schools shouldn't be closed. The union, though, doesn't think any schools should be closed.

"I think it's a manufactured crisis," Lewis said. "The numbers they are using to justify this work are not real numbers."

Critics have questioned the commission's independence from Byrd-Bennett and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, their suspicions fueled by the fact that the body is taking advice from the Civic Consulting Alliance, which has done extensive work for the mayor.

On Thursday, Clark acknowledged that the Alliance helped the commission put together its preliminary report.

"They don't guide us," he said. "They helped with the drafting. They helped with notes. But every word in this document is the consensus of the commission itself. No one directed us what to say."

When asked if that meant the group did not help with analysis on the report, Clark said, "I didn't say they didn't help with the analysis. The question is, 'Did they write a report and we signed off on it?' and the answer is 'No.'"